Glossybox UK

This is a general review, for specific month reviews, including product reviews, search by box name and month or look out for upcoming review posts.

Glossybox advertises itself as “UK’s No. 1 beauty box”. Weirdly, so does Birchbox! It is not clear on what terms they are making this claim, is it subscriber numbers? Value for money? I will keep you posted if I find out!

If you know, let us know! On what basis are these claims on? Are they just simply…promotional lies? There can only be one No. 1 so at least one of the two is generous with their claim. Are they both No. 1 in different areas? One in subscribers, other in revenue?

Anyways, onwards!

Glossybox is currently £10 + £3.25 P&P a month, if you choose the monthly rolling option where you are free to cancel anytime. It is slightly cheaper if you commit for 3 or 6 months (£0.50 and £1.00 a month respectively). Unlike Cohorted where you have to pre-order for next month, you will receive your first box the month you subscribed (within a few days) unless the box is out of stock. It usually contains 5 personalised beauty products each month and a leaflet with a little info about each product. Glossybox, like Birchbox, also allows you to create a “personal beauty profile” so you can let them know if you are a blonde or brunette or if you have oily skin etc so that’s what they mean by personalised.

The personalisation is slightly higher than in Birchbox. Usually, there are 3 products that everyone gets and 2 that vary in each box. They usually also have a small selection of the “varied” products, 3-4 different ones (this varies), and they give you the ones out of the 3-4 that are most suited to your profile. So again like the Birchbox, personalised….to an extend but atleast 2 of the 5 are chosen for your profile not 1 like out of 5 in Birchbox.
The box is always a standard pink “gift” box with a top lid. The design print doesn’t change unless the box is a special edition, like for example in February it was designed to follow the month’s love theme. Despite the repeating design however, it is still a pretty, sturdy box, of a decent size, that you can use for storage or maybe even gift giving! The contents come in a bed of black straw-like material and are all wrapped nicely with a pink paper and held together with a Glossybox sticker. It looks absolutely lovely to open. It is a gift to yourself!

Glossybox also hosts a monthly theme which relates to the products that are included. It has a good balance between cheaper brands and products that are more mainstream. I wouldn’t describe this box as “high end” (like for example the Cohorted box) but neither as “drug store” (like the Birchbox most of the time). I must admit, even with the lack of unique box design each month, which can make your box collection over the months rather boring, out of the four beauty boxes I subscribe to (Birchbox, Glossybox, Feel Fantastic box and Cohorted), Glossybox is the one I look forward to opening the most! There will always be a month, or a few, where you might not like your boxes as much as other month’s but I find that Glossybox is actually the most consistently pleasing beauty box for me!

The Glossybox products are mostly travel size (10-30mL and sometimes bigger!) and not often the small, 1-2 time use samples, which is amazing. Additionally, as opposed to Birchbox, when Glossybox includes the bigger than sample size tubes, they are always full! The quantities of the products included are always more than enough to try out for a week minimum and that’s amazing. There are quite few products actually that I have been using for months! You will definitely get enough product amount to try it out long enough to form an opinion on whether you will ever buy those products full size or not. As opposed to Birchbox, most products arrive sealed so you know that noone opened or used them which also makes their 6M, 12M, 24M or whatever their expiration date is, more accurate.

Glossybox January 2018

Glossybox also has a loyalty scheme which has changed over the years. It used to be that if you review the products of your monthly box, on their online website, you will receive Glossydots (let’s give it to them that’s an amazing branding name and for some unknown girly reason, Glossydots make me excited). Eventually, while you collect Glossydots you will earn a free box (1000 Glossydots for a free box). Rough maths shows that at the current Glossydot rate, and if you review all your items each month, you will get 1 free box every 10 boxes so roughly, 1 free box a year.

However, they have now changed their reward scheme to real money credit not Glossydots. So now for every survey that you fill in, about the products included in the box, you get credited £0.25 that you can spend in their online store. As a result, this means that you will earn £18 a year if you do all 6 surveys every month (5 surveys on products and 1 general on the box). Is that worth the effort of filling in 72 surveys? I’ll let you decide.

The good news is that you can now spend that credit on the online shop of www.lookfantastic.com meaning that you can buy your beauty products at a discounted price or for free if you ranked up enough money.

Glossybox October 2017

Like Birchbox, Glossybox also rewards you for inviting friends. You can earn up to £10 of credit on their online shop for each friend you invite. I also guess there is a limited number of times they would do that but I obviously don’t know this for a fact.
Finally, like Birchbox, Glossybox has a preview of their current month’s products on their website but unlike Birchbox which displays all of them, they only show 3 out of 5. I’m assuming they show the 3 products that are common for everyone and leave out the 2 that are personalised to your beauty profile. I find that slightly annoying as I like the surprise element when I open my boxes so I try to avoid their emails and website until I have opened my box. Sadly, you cannot avoid one product spoiler per month as they feature in the current month’s box one of the next month’s products. Sometimes this is not so bad as you get to choose colours, like for example what colours do you want your eye pallete to have, but other times there is no choice and it is just a spoiler. This is meant to create excitement for next month and if it happens to be a product you specifically wanted to try it can create a reasonable amount of excitement, however, for me it is more of a spoiler. I do love however, that this feature gives you some sense of commitment as to what is going in the box next month, so it gives you the feel that they are preparing the box already rather than the feeling of random products being included because they had no time to get other deals.

Glossybox May 2018

Personal opinion: Is it my favourite? It is. I admit it! The size of the products is very good and the brands included are a nice balance between drugstore, mainstream and higher end. The personalisation is higher than in any of the four boxes I subscribe to and most of the products come sealed. This box is a very good value for money and the excitement factor to open the box and try the products is definitely consistent and high!